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Yeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?"
] |
>
How wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my "empathy" to be reduced to a fantasy? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress."
] |
>
I'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?"
] |
>
I think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that "we know how organisms experience distress." | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress."
] |
>
its not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\""
] |
>
It's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so."
] |
>
I'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates."
] |
>
That's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to "put yourself in their shoes," you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them."
] |
>
Would it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm?
Using empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation."
] |
>
I think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition."
] |
>
The pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were "universals" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation.
If we're talking about pain, "pain" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful.
At the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as "withdrawing"—across different animal kingdoms.
Mead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is.
A parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: "how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful).
Taking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as "painful" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way."
] |
>
I like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms.
The same exact thing can happen with humans. "How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response."
] |
>
Empathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim."
] |
>
How could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us."
] |
>
Your view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.
Your view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.
Understanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?"
] |
>
I disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.
Now, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that "That'd suck."
Frankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain."
] |
>
Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.
Because it would kill. That spider is no longer alive.
Most people agree that dying sucks. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here."
] |
>
Most people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not.
Most people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks."
] |
>
Ok, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think.
It's about what the people think,
If a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?
Even if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all."
] |
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In that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying."
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Do you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal."
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Yes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?"
] |
>
This is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.
What do you think would be worse
Knowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness."
] |
>
The psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........
Unless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?"
] |
>
Let's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.
Now, as a person being tortured would probably suck right? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual."
] |
>
In almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?"
] |
>
Yeah, hope I never go through it.
If someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful."
] |
>
If an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?"
] |
>
When an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.
And as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.
You say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?
You also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes."
] |
>
Why does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence.
You can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture). | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?"
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You say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?
At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food
That's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture)."
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I don't think that consciousness or pain is "unknown". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of "flavors." Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.
To be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult.
But that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing"
] |
>
humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of "flavors."
Can you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.
Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.
Therefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?
I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious.
If there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV
When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.
You talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing."
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Humans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives.
I don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.
Concrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy.
Yes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?"
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I don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.
But why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?
Many animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?
And my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.
The complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers."
] |
>
I don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing.
Empathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly.
I don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?"
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In your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?
Can you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?
If any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?
Empathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness."
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I cannot empathize with "suffering" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences.
I can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything.
"Trying not to die" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy."
] |
>
I'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates.
I like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here."
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If a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them."
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Is it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear."
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Here I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.
Which is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear."
] |
>
Absolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis). | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?"
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Can you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?
This would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis)."
] |
>
You could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative."
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An octopus? A crow?
These are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one."
] |
>
True. But intelligence and capacity to suffer aren't the same thing. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one.",
">\n\n\nAn octopus? A crow?\n\nThese are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom"
] |
>
perhaps, but it seems to fairly correlated to consciousness. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one.",
">\n\n\nAn octopus? A crow?\n\nThese are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom",
">\n\nTrue. But intelligence and capacity to suffer aren't the same thing."
] |
>
I think that you're probably right. If I were to make a bet, I'd probably gamble that corvids, apes, cetaceans, and cephalopods probably experience the most pain. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one.",
">\n\n\nAn octopus? A crow?\n\nThese are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom",
">\n\nTrue. But intelligence and capacity to suffer aren't the same thing.",
">\n\nperhaps, but it seems to fairly correlated to consciousness."
] |
>
U should check out the stuff that Jordan Peterson says about serotonin in the nervous systems of lobsters.
I'm inclined to say that ur assertion here is less salient than u think it is. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one.",
">\n\n\nAn octopus? A crow?\n\nThese are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom",
">\n\nTrue. But intelligence and capacity to suffer aren't the same thing.",
">\n\nperhaps, but it seems to fairly correlated to consciousness.",
">\n\nI think that you're probably right. If I were to make a bet, I'd probably gamble that corvids, apes, cetaceans, and cephalopods probably experience the most pain."
] |
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I mean this is just false. Things like pain are fundamental to life and evolved long enough ago to where it is a common ancestor. Also different species do not have radically different base neurology / nervous systems. Which is why we use lab rats / mice for studying drugs / neurology, because we can sacrifice them and things generally work the same.
Yes it is likely a spider can experience most things a human can, including nuanced emotions. Why do you suspect it can’t?
Especially capacity to suffer, it is one of the most fundamental things of life / evolution. Literally all life that has the capacity to avoid death / harm must have it. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one.",
">\n\n\nAn octopus? A crow?\n\nThese are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom",
">\n\nTrue. But intelligence and capacity to suffer aren't the same thing.",
">\n\nperhaps, but it seems to fairly correlated to consciousness.",
">\n\nI think that you're probably right. If I were to make a bet, I'd probably gamble that corvids, apes, cetaceans, and cephalopods probably experience the most pain.",
">\n\nU should check out the stuff that Jordan Peterson says about serotonin in the nervous systems of lobsters. \nI'm inclined to say that ur assertion here is less salient than u think it is."
] |
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I think it depends quite a bit which kind of animal we’re talking about. Anthropomorphizing critters which are vastly different from humans is foolish & potentially dangerous (in many different ways) but it’s not unreasonable to compare humans to other relatively advanced mammals. Our sensory arrays are usually roughly analogous and our brains are similar enough. Some advanced avian theropods appear to process emotions (and communicate) in ways that would suggest we have a fair bit in common. | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one.",
">\n\n\nAn octopus? A crow?\n\nThese are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom",
">\n\nTrue. But intelligence and capacity to suffer aren't the same thing.",
">\n\nperhaps, but it seems to fairly correlated to consciousness.",
">\n\nI think that you're probably right. If I were to make a bet, I'd probably gamble that corvids, apes, cetaceans, and cephalopods probably experience the most pain.",
">\n\nU should check out the stuff that Jordan Peterson says about serotonin in the nervous systems of lobsters. \nI'm inclined to say that ur assertion here is less salient than u think it is.",
">\n\nI mean this is just false. Things like pain are fundamental to life and evolved long enough ago to where it is a common ancestor. Also different species do not have radically different base neurology / nervous systems. Which is why we use lab rats / mice for studying drugs / neurology, because we can sacrifice them and things generally work the same.\nYes it is likely a spider can experience most things a human can, including nuanced emotions. Why do you suspect it can’t?\nEspecially capacity to suffer, it is one of the most fundamental things of life / evolution. Literally all life that has the capacity to avoid death / harm must have it."
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Do you endorse suffering? Is your desire to allow suffering of animals even if it's not needed? | [
"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one.",
">\n\n\nAn octopus? A crow?\n\nThese are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom",
">\n\nTrue. But intelligence and capacity to suffer aren't the same thing.",
">\n\nperhaps, but it seems to fairly correlated to consciousness.",
">\n\nI think that you're probably right. If I were to make a bet, I'd probably gamble that corvids, apes, cetaceans, and cephalopods probably experience the most pain.",
">\n\nU should check out the stuff that Jordan Peterson says about serotonin in the nervous systems of lobsters. \nI'm inclined to say that ur assertion here is less salient than u think it is.",
">\n\nI mean this is just false. Things like pain are fundamental to life and evolved long enough ago to where it is a common ancestor. Also different species do not have radically different base neurology / nervous systems. Which is why we use lab rats / mice for studying drugs / neurology, because we can sacrifice them and things generally work the same.\nYes it is likely a spider can experience most things a human can, including nuanced emotions. Why do you suspect it can’t?\nEspecially capacity to suffer, it is one of the most fundamental things of life / evolution. Literally all life that has the capacity to avoid death / harm must have it.",
">\n\nI think it depends quite a bit which kind of animal we’re talking about. Anthropomorphizing critters which are vastly different from humans is foolish & potentially dangerous (in many different ways) but it’s not unreasonable to compare humans to other relatively advanced mammals. Our sensory arrays are usually roughly analogous and our brains are similar enough. Some advanced avian theropods appear to process emotions (and communicate) in ways that would suggest we have a fair bit in common."
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"Taxonomic classifications are built out around recognizable similarities in animals biological structures. Setting aside how precisely we understand brain function in non-human species, it takes little effort to see that most vertebrates are structured in a way that heavily overlaps with human biology. They are similar. Why would you assume they aren't?\nAnd if you go from a \"philosophical\" perspective and ask how we could possibly know what they feel, you may well extend that to humans. How do I know you experience qualia?\nYou're getting so caught up in precision that you're overlooking obvious similarities. Can't see the forest through the trees. That animal has a nervous system and demonstrates a pain response. How much more detail do you need to be able to understand it feels pain?\nFor creatures without similar structures, we don't make the same assumptions about pain and suffering. Do carrots feel fear? Do mollusks weep? No one thinks about that.",
">\n\nExcept for the fact that many people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants. You clearly understand enough biology to think clearly about this topic. All I'm saying is that everyone else should make an attempt to meet that minimum standard of understanding.",
">\n\n\nmany people claim to empathize with invertebrates or even plants.\n\nVery few claim to empathize with invertebrates, but crabs and lobsters and other crustaceans have pain responses too, so it's still not an example on your side here. My point was that people see similarity in responses and behavior, and that's made possible by our very real similarities. That Doctor so-and-so knows the science of it all and Dennis your vegan high school classmate does not makes no difference. \nThe science explains why we have similarities and why we see and feel similarities that allow us to empathize. But not knowing the science doesn't invalidate the emotional feeling—the right answer is right whether or not you show your work.\nAs for people who \"empathize\" with plants, they fall into two categories: [1] People who are personifying plants because it's a useful rhetorical technique, but don't actually believe plants feel complex emotions; and [2] extreme outliers that don't merit serious consideration. If \"crazy people believe crazy things\" is your best defense here, you've lost focus on the \"philosophical\" question your post is about.",
">\n\nWe might just have different experiences when it comes to people's claims about the range of their empathy. I know plenty of not-crazy individuals who either claim to or speak as though they understand the feelings of an invertebrate. I might have a sampling bias because I spend a lot of time around animals and teach HS biology. \nI agree that the right answer is right whether or not you show your work, but showing your work is necessary to distinguish between the right answer and an answer that seems right, but isn't. It certainly seems like it'd be painful to be a clam being eaten by an octopus. This might even illicit a little bit of sadness for the clam... But upon further reflection I might realize that clams don't have centralized nervous systems. They don't have families that will mourn their demise. They don't have unfulfilled dreams or projects. I've now shown my work and realized that my previous answer was incorrect.",
">\n\nAgain, you're pushing out to extremes to justify your position, but if you have to run all the way to mollusks, animals without a central nervous system, to stick to your view, it sure seems like you've abandoned it for every animal that does have one.\nAnd for those, there's no need for people to show their work. Because they're right. Someone else can check it for them. Verified. Instinct to empathy validated.",
">\n\nNot necessarily. I used mollusks because it's a simple and easy case. I can make my point without getting lost in the details. We can ask the same question for animals of increasing complexity. You begin at simple cases, then move on to more difficult cases.",
">\n\n\nMost people's opinions about animal rights and animal suffering are informed by a gut feeling of indignation/guilt/sadness when they see an animal responding to a negative stimulus.\n\nSure I guess I agree with this. I'd say it goes beyond pain though. \n\nHere's the issue: pain is a really complex set of processes that are intrinsically linked to the structure of an organism's nervous system.\n\nAgreed\n\nFeeling empathy for an abused dog only makes sense insofar as the dog has neurological structural similarities to you. \n\nDisagree. While that helps, humans like to map our own experiences onto other organisms regardless of how similar they are to us neurologically. \n\nThe further away we get on the evolutionary tree, the less empathy makes sense. Empathy for a spider? An octopus? A crow?\n\nAgain disagree. People don't take evolutionary closeness into account in any context. Organisms that may be distantly related to us could have evolved similar attributes via convergent evolution. This is completely irrelevant. \n\nUf you claim to care about animals you should drop any pretense to understand what they're feeling and get a basic understanding of the variety of nervous systems in the animal kingdom and how those systems respond to stimuli.\n\nYou seem to disagree with yourself here. One, with lots of animals we have a pretty good understanding of their behavior when in distress, take any lab animal as an example of this. Second, many animals will exhibit traits similar to humans when in distress. Now I'll agree that it's important to not misinterpret an animals responses but some are quite unmistakable and we do research into animal behavior as well. \nIt seems to me you're proposing we stop using empathy so we can research how animals react and experience distress then, once we know, go back to using empathy.",
">\n\nI don't see how you disagree with points 3 and 4. You're making claims about what humans like to do and what humans actually do. I'm making claims about what humans have rational justification for doing. I'm saying that it's nonsensical to attempt to empathize with a spider. I know that some people will disregard the structural dissimilarities, and that's the problem.",
">\n\nI'm saying, why? Why can't we empathize with it? Is your requirement that we understand how spiders exhibit stress, discomfort or distress? If so, and if someone knows those expressions and a spider is expressing them why is empathizing with it bad? Why is it bad to empathize when a bug misses a meal? Or when it loses a leg? Certainly it isn't experiencing those things as a human would but I see no reason why we can't empathize with them.",
">\n\nThen you're not empathizing, you're just having a strange fantasy about the inner life of bugs.",
">\n\nWhat? No, you're empathizing with a creature in distress.",
">\n\nIf you're experiencing something and I claim to be empathizing with you, but I completely mischaracterize the experience you're actually having, am I actually empathizing?",
">\n\nYeah well that's why I was saying we know how animals experience and respond to stress. You don't have to know exactly how it feels to empathize with an animal experiencing stress.",
">\n\nHow wrong can I be about the experience of another organism for my \"empathy\" to be reduced to a fantasy?",
">\n\nI'm telling you we aren't wrong though. We know how organisms experience distress, we know how they respond to it and show outward signs of it, we know their neurological anatomy, we aren't wrong. The only thing we cannot know is how it actually feels to them. We do know how stress feels and we know all these things about them. We aren't wrong to empathize with it being in distress.",
">\n\nI think you're a little overconfident in our capacity to study something as complicated as pain. We've had some interesting insights into the phenomenon of pain, but I think it's a mistake to boldly claim that \"we know how organisms experience distress.\"",
">\n\nits not a poor tool, simply not one that can be applied to every animal, and people who like dogs can still murder spiders without a shred of remorse, so its also not one used on every animal or required to do so.",
">\n\nIt's a tool that rapidly loses efficacy as you move further away on the evolutionary tree. It's a decent tool for other humans. It's probably sufficient when it comes to non-human mammals. It's absolutely useless when it comes to invertebrates.",
">\n\nI'd say it's a fine tool to use given we can't actually experience life like them.",
">\n\nThat's precisely why it's a poor tool. Your empathetic response will always be closed by anthropocentric sentiments. Rather than trying to \"put yourself in their shoes,\" you might consider taking their shoes and performing every sort of scientific/empirical test on them to see if you can understand a little more about the situation.",
">\n\nWould it not be safer to assume they experience pain? So as not to go around torturing creatures needlessly because we simply can’t prove they experience pain the same way? Would you rather not use empathy and an unknowingly inflict terrible pain on invertebrates? Or rather use empathy and kill them humanely to avoid the possibility you’re causing undue harm? \nUsing empathy actually works against your own argument, the unknown. We can’t prove they don’t experience pain the same way, we can’t prove they do either. Wouldn’t it be a better measure to assume they do? Squash them quick and fast (if you must kill a spider, I let them live) instead of setting them on fire or ripping it’s legs off so it dies from lack nutrition.",
">\n\nI think that your reasoning here is great. I think that we ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to animal suffering (both human and non-human). I don't think that empathy is required to make this argument. I think that it just gets in the way.",
">\n\nThe pragmatist philosopher G.H. Mead has an argument about the philosophy of psychology that's relevant here. In contradistinction to behaviorists, he argued that there were \"universals\" in behavior that the psychologist could study. These universals were not particular stimuli, nor even particular responses to stimuli, but what was characteristic about a range of stimuli that elicited a similarity of response across kinds of situation. \nIf we're talking about pain, \"pain\" would have something characteristically universal about it in humans if it turned out that much the same kind of stimuli elicit pain across people. Fire, in this sense of universal, is universally painful. \nAt the right level of generality—say, where a flinch becomes just a variety of withdrawing from a stimuli, amongst which there are other varieties—there are a range of stimuli (like fire) that elicit similarity of responses—in this case, responses that can all be glossed as \"withdrawing\"—across different animal kingdoms. \nMead also makes the argument that when we recognize something as what it is—that is, for example, my dog as a dog—what we are doing is responding to those characteristics in it that are universal in other particulars that we would recognize as being of its kind (e.g., barking, four legs, etc.). Likewise, if we are able to understand pain as eliciting a similarity of response, we can recognize a response to any given painful stimuli as being recognizable because we understand what pain is. \nA parallel argument—by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz—points out that this act of recognition is empathetic. His grounds for thinking so are that we understand what others are feeling, etc., by imagining ourselves in similar circumstances and thinking about how we would respond. It need not be possible for us to have actually undergone the experience ourselves, even (one reason why sentences like: \"how would you feel if someone tore your legs off?\" said to a kid doing that to a spider, often works to convince him that would be painful). \nTaking Schutz and Mead together, we can say that empathy is an effective tool for getting people to think of a variety of animal suffering as painful insofar that it's able to get them to recognize that, were they in a similar circumstance as the animal, they would feel pain. This argument would work insofar that recognizing behavior as \"painful\" does not depend on either self-sameness of stimuli or of responses but, rather, the ability to notice similarities between stimuli and responses that can be glossed as universally characteristic of that type of stimuli or response.",
">\n\nI like the argument from Mead, but there's a massive problem with Schutz's characterization of empathy: A child having his legs ripped off would illicit a pain response. It's unclear whether arachnids can feel anything we can justifiably call pain. The empathy response ultimately fails to capture an accurate picture of reality because it ignores the neurological dissimilarities between the two organisms. \nThe same exact thing can happen with humans. \"How would you like to be slapped in the face and degraded?\" This question hits differently for a masochist than for an abuse victim.",
">\n\nEmpathy may not be perfect, but it's the best tool we have. Experience and experiment shows it works well for mammals and birds. They experience pain and emotional distress in a very similar way to us.",
">\n\nHow could you possibly know that? Is your grandmother a raven?",
">\n\nYour view is just a fact. Of course I cannot experience the same neurological process as a spider. To counter argue this is so absurd to even propose that anyone holds this view constitutes a straw man.\nYour view is easily dismantled when you switch out empathy for sympathy.\nUnderstanding that getting stepped on and crushed to death sucks is something that anyone can understand and doesn't require a spider brain.",
">\n\nI disagree. Why does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt. Why would it hurt? Because I have a nervous system with a certain structure that responds in certain ways to certain stimuli.\nNow, how can I know that being stepped on sucks for spiders? I'd have to study the nervous system of a spider to see if there is sufficient similarity to justify my judgement that \"That'd suck.\" \nFrankly, I don't even know if a spider experiences anything at all. But that's probably too long of a conversation to have here.",
">\n\nWhy does getting stepped on suck? Well, because it would hurt.\nBecause it would kill. That spider is no longer alive. \nMost people agree that dying sucks.",
">\n\nMost people, sure. Some people really want to die. Most animals probably want to continue living. As we move from more complex to less complex species, it's unclear where organisms stop having things like desires. Do dogs want to continue living? Probably. Birds? I think so. Lobsters? Uhhhh...I don't know. I'd put it at 50/50. Spiders? Probably the same as lobsters. Clams? Probably not. Sponges? Almost certainly not. \nMost people agree that dying sucks. I'm unsure what most spiders think. One thing is certain: sponges do not think that dying sucks. They don't think at all.",
">\n\nOk, but we're talking about people's empathy towards animals, Not necessarily what the animals think. \nIt's about what the people think, \nIf a person is getting abused by their wife, And this guy is fine being treated badly, and doesn't want to leave her, does that mean that the people That feel bad for him are wrong?\nEven if the animal doesn't want to continue living, The people know they want to continue living, So if they see something else die that makes them think about themselves dying.",
">\n\nIn that case, empathy might serve as a reminder of one's mortality, but it's not really doing anything to help the empathizer learn anything interesting or helpful about the dying animal.",
">\n\nDo you believe animals, at least the more intelligent ones, have a sense of self-awareness?",
">\n\nYes. I believe that most vertebrates have something that we could justifiably call self-awareness.",
">\n\nThis is just a thought experiment. There is no correct answer.\nWhat do you think would be worse\nKnowing that you are being torture or just experiencing pain?",
">\n\nThe psychological pain that comes from the helplessness of knowing that you're being tortured would mean that knowing that you're being tortured would be more painful than simply experiencing the pain from the torture........\nUnless you're a really committed masochist. Then you might feel a counterbalancing pleasure that would make the pain more bearable... So I guess it depends on the psychological makeup of the individual.",
">\n\nLet's keep the extremes away for the sake of the argument. Outliers exist no argument.\nNow, as a person being tortured would probably suck right?",
">\n\nIn almost every case torture would be one of the worst things a human could endure (I think by definition). Sounds awful.",
">\n\nYeah, hope I never go through it. \nIf someone you knew was tortured, maybe a woman kidnapped or a soldier captured. You'd be able to imagine that would suck, you wouldn't be able to relate but you could understand the stuff that they went through was horrible. Yeah?",
">\n\nIf an average woman I knew were tortured I could relate to certain aspects of the situation. I know what pain feels like. I've felt fear. I've felt hopeless. I wouldn't be able to relate to every aspect of the situation, but I could probably jigsaw together a basic picture of her mental state at the time. At the very least, I'd be able to understand that they've gone through something traumatic and horrible and altogether suboptimal, yes.",
">\n\nWhen an animal or insect is trying to escape the stimulus, that's an indication that it's at best, 'bad' and at worst 'very painful.' It's quite easy to see when what you're doing causes an animal pain.\nAnd as far as having empathy for a spider: maybe having a leg ripped off hurts, maybe it doesn't (see my last point below), but either way it's no longer at full-capacity, which is a situation that a person can empathize with: it's not unreasonable.\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors, but if the pain level is unknown, what about under-estimating them?\nYou also say it's complex and not-understood, but then you say to follow your understanding of it. If it's not understood, why is your understanding correct?",
">\n\nWhy does an attempted escape necessarily indicate pain? Even microscopic organisms move away from stimuli that aren't conducive to their existence. \nYou can't empathize with a spider being at half-capacity because the human experience of a handicap is fundamentally different from the arachnid experience (if arachnids experience anything at all). At best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food (minus the anxiety and hunger pains and social stigma and the plethora of other uniquely human experiences that cloud our judgement when empathy enters the picture).",
">\n\nYou say not to over-estimate pain receptors and consciousness, but if pain levels and the nature of consciousness is unknown, what about under-estimating them? And why do you think your correct about things that you say are unknown?\n\nAt best you'd imagine a life where it's slightly more difficult to acquire food\n\nThat's what I mean; at minimum, there's this to empathize with; it's not nothing",
">\n\nI don't think that consciousness or pain is \"unknown\". You're conscious. You feel pain. You can empirically study these phenomena. We're far more likely to overestimate pain levels in non-human animals because humans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\" Underestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is. \nTo be clear: I said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. It's helpful to begin with a blank slate when studying complex topics because outside assumptions can make proper learning difficult. \nBut that experience, the experience of having trouble finding food, is intrinsically linked to our humanity. Spiders don't have mammalian stomachs that rumble. They don't have the same receptors that send hunger pangs. They don't have salivary glands that cause their mouth to water when they think of food. They don't have hands that get shaky when they're malnourished. When you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.",
">\n\n\nhumans are subject to greater levels of pain in a wider variety of \"flavors.\"\n\nCan you explain this, please? I think I disagree, but I want to know what you mean first.\n\nUnderestimating the pain of non-human animals is certainly a danger (ask Descartes), but I think it's a less common one because of how complex our nervous system is.\n\nTherefore, empathy is not a poor tool when thinking about animal suffering?\n\nI said that you ought to drop your pretense of knowledge, not that the topics are intrinsically mysterious. \n\nIf there aren't concrete answers and measures, there is mystery. If this wasn't somewhat vague / mysterious, we wouldn't need this CMV\n\nWhen you strip the experience of all the anthropological features, you're left with nothing.\n\nYou talk about the complexity of nervous systems, but then have this very reductionist conclusion here about being 'left with nothing'?",
">\n\nHumans experience greater levels of pain when responding to similar stimuli. Our sensory organs (especially our pain receptors) are very finely tuned compared to most other species (obviously there are exceptions like the eyes of hawks, the noses of dogs, and the ears of bats, but generally this holds true). In addition to this, humans experience social and psychological pains. We experience rejection, depression, anxiety, shame, and a whole slew of other negative emotions. Other animals (especially social ones) experience some of these emotions, but humans do something uniquely masochistic: we dwell on these pains. We have minds that can become torturous as they replay the most painful moments of our lives. \nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals. \nConcrete metrics aren't necessary for a mystery to be dissolved. You can have clarity about a topic without rigorous measurements. This is why we have things like literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. \nYes. Exactly. The complexity of the nervous system is precisely what gives rise to the layers of an experience. If I move from one nervous system to another totally different one, I lose those layers.",
">\n\n\nI don't think that empathy has anything to do with general estimates of the capacity for pain of non-human animals.\n\nBut why not? If creatures are averse to certain stimuli, is that not relatable enough for some empathy?\nMany animals display empathy themselves, is it not then useful in thinking about those animals?\nAnd my point was that you don't have concreteness, otherwise there wouldn't be a CMV, it would be a measurable fact.\nThe complexity of the nervous system is something you self-admittedly don't fully understand, yet you claim to understand not only ours, but all of its variations. How can these both be at the same time? Why is what you think true given that we don't understand it and can't experience it?",
">\n\nI don't think simple aversion is enough for me to be able to paint a mental picture of what the organism is experiencing. \nEmpathy is incredibly useful for intraspecies interactions. I think that empathy is really useful and good and I would hate to live in a world without it. The same goes for lust. Empathy and lust are useful and wonderful and great... But they're both really bad tools for thinking clearly. \nI don't understand all of the complexities of the nervous system, but I do know that those complexities are what cause me to experience everything I experience. I know that changes to the nervous system cause changes in experience. I'd assume that radical changes to the nervous system (like being a spider) would cause radical changes in consciousness.",
">\n\nIn your title, the animal is suffering. Is suffering not relatable? Is suffering not worth empathy?\nCan you not tell a suffering dog from a happy one?\nIf any creature is trying not to die, that alone relatable enough for empathy. As you say, there is a nervous system and consciousness, is that not enough to relate to?\nEmpathy is useful in terms of studying animals if you want to understand things ethically, and it's useful if you want to study animals who display empathy.",
">\n\nI cannot empathize with \"suffering\" as a universal experience. I can try to empathize with most mammalian suffering because I assume our nervous systems are similar enough to cause similar experiences. \nI can tell a suffering dog from a happy one. I can probably tell a suffering mouse from a happy one. I think I could tell a suffering bird from a happy one. I don't think I could tell a suffering fish from a happy one. I am completely unclear about how invertebrates might feel about literally anything. \n\"Trying not to die\" is an experience I can empathize with in humans. I could probably try to empathize with a dog trying not to die. Probably same with a mouse...and so on and so on. There's a pattern here.",
">\n\nI'd say that humans and dogs are probably similar enough for empathy to make sense. My primary gripe is with attempts at empathy with invertebrates. \nI like that commercial because it's funny. It's not sad. It's funny because I know that lamps don't experience things. Would the same be true of a spider? I don't know! I don't know whether spiders experience things. If they do, do they experience social emotions like abandonment? Probably not. Why not? Because they're not social species so they likely didn't evolve the capacity to respond to the emotional states of organisms around them.",
">\n\nIf a dog is yelping or whimpering, the meaning is pretty clear.",
">\n\nIs it? Animals with complex nervous systems and social systems exhibit a wide variety of responses to a wide variety of stimuli. Additionally, many abused dogs are trained not to yelp or whimper. An intelligent dog might realize that whimpering and yelping is a good way to get their human's attention. The meaning is not always clear.",
">\n\n\nHere I'm more concerned with philosophy than I am praxis.\n\nWhich is fine, but surely you recognize that animal rights activists are more concerned with praxis, and that it seems quite clear that it's easier to convince people of any position by appealing to their emotions?",
">\n\nAbsolutely. I understand that 100%. The reason I'm concerned with the philosophy is because theory ought to guide praxis. Praxis is blind without theory (and theory is useless without praxis).",
">\n\nCan you give some concrete examples of what you believe to be the better approach to thinking about animal suffering?\nThis would help clarify if empathy really is as poor a tool as you are claiming, relative to your suggested alternative.",
">\n\nYou could just study pain from a scientific and philosophical perspective. What neurological structures are associated with painful feelings in humans? Are there correlates in non-human animals? What structures are present in non-human animals that aren't present in humans? Consider things like complexity, social structures, and evolutionary niche. Taking a thoroughly biological perspective rather than an anthropocentric one.",
">\n\n\nAn octopus? A crow?\n\nThese are two of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom",
">\n\nTrue. But intelligence and capacity to suffer aren't the same thing.",
">\n\nperhaps, but it seems to fairly correlated to consciousness.",
">\n\nI think that you're probably right. If I were to make a bet, I'd probably gamble that corvids, apes, cetaceans, and cephalopods probably experience the most pain.",
">\n\nU should check out the stuff that Jordan Peterson says about serotonin in the nervous systems of lobsters. \nI'm inclined to say that ur assertion here is less salient than u think it is.",
">\n\nI mean this is just false. Things like pain are fundamental to life and evolved long enough ago to where it is a common ancestor. Also different species do not have radically different base neurology / nervous systems. Which is why we use lab rats / mice for studying drugs / neurology, because we can sacrifice them and things generally work the same.\nYes it is likely a spider can experience most things a human can, including nuanced emotions. Why do you suspect it can’t?\nEspecially capacity to suffer, it is one of the most fundamental things of life / evolution. Literally all life that has the capacity to avoid death / harm must have it.",
">\n\nI think it depends quite a bit which kind of animal we’re talking about. Anthropomorphizing critters which are vastly different from humans is foolish & potentially dangerous (in many different ways) but it’s not unreasonable to compare humans to other relatively advanced mammals. Our sensory arrays are usually roughly analogous and our brains are similar enough. Some advanced avian theropods appear to process emotions (and communicate) in ways that would suggest we have a fair bit in common.",
">\n\nDo you endorse suffering? Is your desire to allow suffering of animals even if it's not needed?"
] |
Somebody is gonna be busy.. | [] |
> | [
"Somebody is gonna be busy.."
] |
Note there's nothing in there about Bannon. | [] |
>
I mean there's not a lot of reason to focus on Bannon considering he was one of the few who got a blanket pardon for this period of time. Knowing how he operates, he will likely keep criming though. | [
"Note there's nothing in there about Bannon."
] |
>
Look, when the inspiration for BioDome shows up and tries to take over your country, you have to skull fuck him for something. You go judicial, extrajudicial, turbojudicial, transjudicial, I don't care, but he gotta go. Plus you see him doing the same thing in other countries? Guy's done enough damage. | [
"Note there's nothing in there about Bannon.",
">\n\nI mean there's not a lot of reason to focus on Bannon considering he was one of the few who got a blanket pardon for this period of time. Knowing how he operates, he will likely keep criming though."
] |
>
Oh, he absolutely deserves justice, but that doesn't mean the committee should focus on him when he can't be indicted for it. | [
"Note there's nothing in there about Bannon.",
">\n\nI mean there's not a lot of reason to focus on Bannon considering he was one of the few who got a blanket pardon for this period of time. Knowing how he operates, he will likely keep criming though.",
">\n\nLook, when the inspiration for BioDome shows up and tries to take over your country, you have to skull fuck him for something. You go judicial, extrajudicial, turbojudicial, transjudicial, I don't care, but he gotta go. Plus you see him doing the same thing in other countries? Guy's done enough damage."
] |
>
I mean speaking as the guy who probably made the decision that had the greatest impact on the call to withdrawal? I went in that day knowing I was going toe to toe with Steve Bannon. We were gonna see what was better, logistics or Nazi Wizard bullshit. It's disheartening to see him walking around, talking, wearing two shirts and having legs like he does. I'm thinking that anyone who gets an actual search warrant on him will take the entire organization down because he heads out. It's an investigation competence issue. | [
"Note there's nothing in there about Bannon.",
">\n\nI mean there's not a lot of reason to focus on Bannon considering he was one of the few who got a blanket pardon for this period of time. Knowing how he operates, he will likely keep criming though.",
">\n\nLook, when the inspiration for BioDome shows up and tries to take over your country, you have to skull fuck him for something. You go judicial, extrajudicial, turbojudicial, transjudicial, I don't care, but he gotta go. Plus you see him doing the same thing in other countries? Guy's done enough damage.",
">\n\nOh, he absolutely deserves justice, but that doesn't mean the committee should focus on him when he can't be indicted for it."
] |
>
Why does CNN have a block of 'Paid Content' clickbaity misinformation at the bottom of every news page?
Either be a news site or don't. | [
"Note there's nothing in there about Bannon.",
">\n\nI mean there's not a lot of reason to focus on Bannon considering he was one of the few who got a blanket pardon for this period of time. Knowing how he operates, he will likely keep criming though.",
">\n\nLook, when the inspiration for BioDome shows up and tries to take over your country, you have to skull fuck him for something. You go judicial, extrajudicial, turbojudicial, transjudicial, I don't care, but he gotta go. Plus you see him doing the same thing in other countries? Guy's done enough damage.",
">\n\nOh, he absolutely deserves justice, but that doesn't mean the committee should focus on him when he can't be indicted for it.",
">\n\nI mean speaking as the guy who probably made the decision that had the greatest impact on the call to withdrawal? I went in that day knowing I was going toe to toe with Steve Bannon. We were gonna see what was better, logistics or Nazi Wizard bullshit. It's disheartening to see him walking around, talking, wearing two shirts and having legs like he does. I'm thinking that anyone who gets an actual search warrant on him will take the entire organization down because he heads out. It's an investigation competence issue."
] |
>
Their new right-wing owner sees Fox News as the paradigm of journalism, and has purged the staff to make it happen. The website changes are probably an effort to increase profits, gotta service the debt incurred with that takeover. | [
"Note there's nothing in there about Bannon.",
">\n\nI mean there's not a lot of reason to focus on Bannon considering he was one of the few who got a blanket pardon for this period of time. Knowing how he operates, he will likely keep criming though.",
">\n\nLook, when the inspiration for BioDome shows up and tries to take over your country, you have to skull fuck him for something. You go judicial, extrajudicial, turbojudicial, transjudicial, I don't care, but he gotta go. Plus you see him doing the same thing in other countries? Guy's done enough damage.",
">\n\nOh, he absolutely deserves justice, but that doesn't mean the committee should focus on him when he can't be indicted for it.",
">\n\nI mean speaking as the guy who probably made the decision that had the greatest impact on the call to withdrawal? I went in that day knowing I was going toe to toe with Steve Bannon. We were gonna see what was better, logistics or Nazi Wizard bullshit. It's disheartening to see him walking around, talking, wearing two shirts and having legs like he does. I'm thinking that anyone who gets an actual search warrant on him will take the entire organization down because he heads out. It's an investigation competence issue.",
">\n\nWhy does CNN have a block of 'Paid Content' clickbaity misinformation at the bottom of every news page?\nEither be a news site or don't."
] |
> | [
"Note there's nothing in there about Bannon.",
">\n\nI mean there's not a lot of reason to focus on Bannon considering he was one of the few who got a blanket pardon for this period of time. Knowing how he operates, he will likely keep criming though.",
">\n\nLook, when the inspiration for BioDome shows up and tries to take over your country, you have to skull fuck him for something. You go judicial, extrajudicial, turbojudicial, transjudicial, I don't care, but he gotta go. Plus you see him doing the same thing in other countries? Guy's done enough damage.",
">\n\nOh, he absolutely deserves justice, but that doesn't mean the committee should focus on him when he can't be indicted for it.",
">\n\nI mean speaking as the guy who probably made the decision that had the greatest impact on the call to withdrawal? I went in that day knowing I was going toe to toe with Steve Bannon. We were gonna see what was better, logistics or Nazi Wizard bullshit. It's disheartening to see him walking around, talking, wearing two shirts and having legs like he does. I'm thinking that anyone who gets an actual search warrant on him will take the entire organization down because he heads out. It's an investigation competence issue.",
">\n\nWhy does CNN have a block of 'Paid Content' clickbaity misinformation at the bottom of every news page?\nEither be a news site or don't.",
">\n\nTheir new right-wing owner sees Fox News as the paradigm of journalism, and has purged the staff to make it happen. The website changes are probably an effort to increase profits, gotta service the debt incurred with that takeover."
] |
But progressive judicial activists warn that the Senate leadership might need to take other steps to keep up the pace the next two years. So far, Democrats have adhered to an informal tradition that gives home-state senators virtual veto power over nominees for district court slots under what is known as the “blue slip” rule by agreeing to not move forward unless senators return a blue slip of approval. | [] |
>
I’m real tired of all these “gentlemen agreements” in the federal govt. Turns out the meritocracy we were told to elevate never actually existed. Shocked | [
"But progressive judicial activists warn that the Senate leadership might need to take other steps to keep up the pace the next two years. So far, Democrats have adhered to an informal tradition that gives home-state senators virtual veto power over nominees for district court slots under what is known as the “blue slip” rule by agreeing to not move forward unless senators return a blue slip of approval."
] |
>
Actually, all of these gentlemen agreements (known as Democratic Norms) are exactly why the system works.
That is, until someone decides they don't have to follow the rules, completely disregarding two centuries of tradition and practice. All of a sudden the whole thing feels flimsy and ill-conceived, not because it doesn't work but because people keep attacking it with sledge hammers.
Don't blame the system, blame the bad actors who believe that politics should be played to win, no matter the cost. The problem with total war is that, win or lose, the battlefield is still trashed beyond recovery. | [
"But progressive judicial activists warn that the Senate leadership might need to take other steps to keep up the pace the next two years. So far, Democrats have adhered to an informal tradition that gives home-state senators virtual veto power over nominees for district court slots under what is known as the “blue slip” rule by agreeing to not move forward unless senators return a blue slip of approval.",
">\n\nI’m real tired of all these “gentlemen agreements” in the federal govt. Turns out the meritocracy we were told to elevate never actually existed. Shocked"
] |
>
Spot on. What finally broke ancient Roman democracy was also the sudden and rapid disregarding of traditions that weren't technically laws. | [
"But progressive judicial activists warn that the Senate leadership might need to take other steps to keep up the pace the next two years. So far, Democrats have adhered to an informal tradition that gives home-state senators virtual veto power over nominees for district court slots under what is known as the “blue slip” rule by agreeing to not move forward unless senators return a blue slip of approval.",
">\n\nI’m real tired of all these “gentlemen agreements” in the federal govt. Turns out the meritocracy we were told to elevate never actually existed. Shocked",
">\n\nActually, all of these gentlemen agreements (known as Democratic Norms) are exactly why the system works.\nThat is, until someone decides they don't have to follow the rules, completely disregarding two centuries of tradition and practice. All of a sudden the whole thing feels flimsy and ill-conceived, not because it doesn't work but because people keep attacking it with sledge hammers.\nDon't blame the system, blame the bad actors who believe that politics should be played to win, no matter the cost. The problem with total war is that, win or lose, the battlefield is still trashed beyond recovery."
] |
>
The only difference is that the Biden-appointed judges are qualified. | [
"But progressive judicial activists warn that the Senate leadership might need to take other steps to keep up the pace the next two years. So far, Democrats have adhered to an informal tradition that gives home-state senators virtual veto power over nominees for district court slots under what is known as the “blue slip” rule by agreeing to not move forward unless senators return a blue slip of approval.",
">\n\nI’m real tired of all these “gentlemen agreements” in the federal govt. Turns out the meritocracy we were told to elevate never actually existed. Shocked",
">\n\nActually, all of these gentlemen agreements (known as Democratic Norms) are exactly why the system works.\nThat is, until someone decides they don't have to follow the rules, completely disregarding two centuries of tradition and practice. All of a sudden the whole thing feels flimsy and ill-conceived, not because it doesn't work but because people keep attacking it with sledge hammers.\nDon't blame the system, blame the bad actors who believe that politics should be played to win, no matter the cost. The problem with total war is that, win or lose, the battlefield is still trashed beyond recovery.",
">\n\nSpot on. What finally broke ancient Roman democracy was also the sudden and rapid disregarding of traditions that weren't technically laws."
] |
>
The Democrats need to fill the federal judiciary with judges that are at least as far to the left as the Federalist Society originalists are to the right. We need to get some authentic Marxians on SCOTUS and on the Circuit Courts. As long as we put neoliberal "moderates" up against the scorched earth fascists, we'll always lose. | [
"But progressive judicial activists warn that the Senate leadership might need to take other steps to keep up the pace the next two years. So far, Democrats have adhered to an informal tradition that gives home-state senators virtual veto power over nominees for district court slots under what is known as the “blue slip” rule by agreeing to not move forward unless senators return a blue slip of approval.",
">\n\nI’m real tired of all these “gentlemen agreements” in the federal govt. Turns out the meritocracy we were told to elevate never actually existed. Shocked",
">\n\nActually, all of these gentlemen agreements (known as Democratic Norms) are exactly why the system works.\nThat is, until someone decides they don't have to follow the rules, completely disregarding two centuries of tradition and practice. All of a sudden the whole thing feels flimsy and ill-conceived, not because it doesn't work but because people keep attacking it with sledge hammers.\nDon't blame the system, blame the bad actors who believe that politics should be played to win, no matter the cost. The problem with total war is that, win or lose, the battlefield is still trashed beyond recovery.",
">\n\nSpot on. What finally broke ancient Roman democracy was also the sudden and rapid disregarding of traditions that weren't technically laws.",
">\n\nThe only difference is that the Biden-appointed judges are qualified."
] |
>
Democrats are not putting marxists on the Supreme Court unless it’s by accident. Mainstream Democrats are socially progressive, but economically liberal (read pro-capital, just not outright anti-labor…except when they are). | [
"But progressive judicial activists warn that the Senate leadership might need to take other steps to keep up the pace the next two years. So far, Democrats have adhered to an informal tradition that gives home-state senators virtual veto power over nominees for district court slots under what is known as the “blue slip” rule by agreeing to not move forward unless senators return a blue slip of approval.",
">\n\nI’m real tired of all these “gentlemen agreements” in the federal govt. Turns out the meritocracy we were told to elevate never actually existed. Shocked",
">\n\nActually, all of these gentlemen agreements (known as Democratic Norms) are exactly why the system works.\nThat is, until someone decides they don't have to follow the rules, completely disregarding two centuries of tradition and practice. All of a sudden the whole thing feels flimsy and ill-conceived, not because it doesn't work but because people keep attacking it with sledge hammers.\nDon't blame the system, blame the bad actors who believe that politics should be played to win, no matter the cost. The problem with total war is that, win or lose, the battlefield is still trashed beyond recovery.",
">\n\nSpot on. What finally broke ancient Roman democracy was also the sudden and rapid disregarding of traditions that weren't technically laws.",
">\n\nThe only difference is that the Biden-appointed judges are qualified.",
">\n\nThe Democrats need to fill the federal judiciary with judges that are at least as far to the left as the Federalist Society originalists are to the right. We need to get some authentic Marxians on SCOTUS and on the Circuit Courts. As long as we put neoliberal \"moderates\" up against the scorched earth fascists, we'll always lose."
] |
> | [
"But progressive judicial activists warn that the Senate leadership might need to take other steps to keep up the pace the next two years. So far, Democrats have adhered to an informal tradition that gives home-state senators virtual veto power over nominees for district court slots under what is known as the “blue slip” rule by agreeing to not move forward unless senators return a blue slip of approval.",
">\n\nI’m real tired of all these “gentlemen agreements” in the federal govt. Turns out the meritocracy we were told to elevate never actually existed. Shocked",
">\n\nActually, all of these gentlemen agreements (known as Democratic Norms) are exactly why the system works.\nThat is, until someone decides they don't have to follow the rules, completely disregarding two centuries of tradition and practice. All of a sudden the whole thing feels flimsy and ill-conceived, not because it doesn't work but because people keep attacking it with sledge hammers.\nDon't blame the system, blame the bad actors who believe that politics should be played to win, no matter the cost. The problem with total war is that, win or lose, the battlefield is still trashed beyond recovery.",
">\n\nSpot on. What finally broke ancient Roman democracy was also the sudden and rapid disregarding of traditions that weren't technically laws.",
">\n\nThe only difference is that the Biden-appointed judges are qualified.",
">\n\nThe Democrats need to fill the federal judiciary with judges that are at least as far to the left as the Federalist Society originalists are to the right. We need to get some authentic Marxians on SCOTUS and on the Circuit Courts. As long as we put neoliberal \"moderates\" up against the scorched earth fascists, we'll always lose.",
">\n\nDemocrats are not putting marxists on the Supreme Court unless it’s by accident. Mainstream Democrats are socially progressive, but economically liberal (read pro-capital, just not outright anti-labor…except when they are)."
] |
I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal. | [] |
>
There was at least one. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal."
] |
>
He died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one."
] |
>
Sheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all."
] |
>
Rabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another"
] |
>
Yeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.
Helplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go."
] |
>
I saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water? | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do."
] |
>
The muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?"
] |
>
Such a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch). | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult."
] |
>
Which honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch)."
] |
>
My sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.
I tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.
Vaccinate your kids, stupid.
Edit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus."
] |
>
My mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel.
Anti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus."
] |
>
There are 2 types of "ant-vaxxer"
There are those radically opposed based on "their own research" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.
It's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today."
] |
>
My mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines."
] |
>
"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong" | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’."
] |
>
I’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.
Both my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.
One minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\""
] |
>
I have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not.
Faced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.
I can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while."
] |
>
Ohio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's."
] |
>
I’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance."
] |
>
Being an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.
It's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids."
] |
>
It's always been anti-science people. Anti-vax, anti-GMO, climate deniers, they all share these traits.
In California we passed a law saying you can't be anti-vax based on religion anymore and go to school. You can be homeschooled or get vaxed unless there's a medical reason and it needs two doctors I think to say that there is a health danger to you. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids.",
">\n\nBeing an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.\nIt's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it."
] |
>
Just blows my mind that some engineers are anti-vax / anti-science. I’m an engineer and that would be the antithesis of my being. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids.",
">\n\nBeing an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.\nIt's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it.",
">\n\nIt's always been anti-science people. Anti-vax, anti-GMO, climate deniers, they all share these traits.\nIn California we passed a law saying you can't be anti-vax based on religion anymore and go to school. You can be homeschooled or get vaxed unless there's a medical reason and it needs two doctors I think to say that there is a health danger to you."
] |
>
We saw the same thing with a lot of nurses too. The people that should be the most on board with vaccines had a non-trivial number refuse the covid vaccine. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids.",
">\n\nBeing an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.\nIt's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it.",
">\n\nIt's always been anti-science people. Anti-vax, anti-GMO, climate deniers, they all share these traits.\nIn California we passed a law saying you can't be anti-vax based on religion anymore and go to school. You can be homeschooled or get vaxed unless there's a medical reason and it needs two doctors I think to say that there is a health danger to you.",
">\n\nJust blows my mind that some engineers are anti-vax / anti-science. I’m an engineer and that would be the antithesis of my being."
] |
>
There was a woman that went into my friends pharmacy and asked them for proof of flu vaccine, but didn’t want the actual vaccine. They didn’t do it for her, but she was a NICU nurse. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids.",
">\n\nBeing an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.\nIt's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it.",
">\n\nIt's always been anti-science people. Anti-vax, anti-GMO, climate deniers, they all share these traits.\nIn California we passed a law saying you can't be anti-vax based on religion anymore and go to school. You can be homeschooled or get vaxed unless there's a medical reason and it needs two doctors I think to say that there is a health danger to you.",
">\n\nJust blows my mind that some engineers are anti-vax / anti-science. I’m an engineer and that would be the antithesis of my being.",
">\n\nWe saw the same thing with a lot of nurses too. The people that should be the most on board with vaccines had a non-trivial number refuse the covid vaccine."
] |
>
I have family members who are L&D nurses and they claimed a religious exemption to skirt the covid vaccine. They also refuse the flu shot every year and sign waivers saying they understand if they get the flu their leave will be unpaid. They then rant about big pharma and doctors being morons who are paid puppets. I finally said if big pharma is so fucking evil and doctors are scum bags then why the fuck did yall go into the nursing profession??? Aaaand crickets. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids.",
">\n\nBeing an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.\nIt's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it.",
">\n\nIt's always been anti-science people. Anti-vax, anti-GMO, climate deniers, they all share these traits.\nIn California we passed a law saying you can't be anti-vax based on religion anymore and go to school. You can be homeschooled or get vaxed unless there's a medical reason and it needs two doctors I think to say that there is a health danger to you.",
">\n\nJust blows my mind that some engineers are anti-vax / anti-science. I’m an engineer and that would be the antithesis of my being.",
">\n\nWe saw the same thing with a lot of nurses too. The people that should be the most on board with vaccines had a non-trivial number refuse the covid vaccine.",
">\n\nThere was a woman that went into my friends pharmacy and asked them for proof of flu vaccine, but didn’t want the actual vaccine. They didn’t do it for her, but she was a NICU nurse."
] |
>
IMO labor and delivery nurses are more likely to think of nursing and bringing “the miracle of life into the world” as a calling because they’re religious. Because of that, I’m not shocked that they are probably conservative anti vaxxers. Maybe they aren’t conservative but big money says they are.
It’s prevalent among the entire field though. Before Covid I had a bunch of coworkers in a cardiac icu who said that they wouldn’t get the flu shot if it wasn’t mandatory. Very troubling. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids.",
">\n\nBeing an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.\nIt's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it.",
">\n\nIt's always been anti-science people. Anti-vax, anti-GMO, climate deniers, they all share these traits.\nIn California we passed a law saying you can't be anti-vax based on religion anymore and go to school. You can be homeschooled or get vaxed unless there's a medical reason and it needs two doctors I think to say that there is a health danger to you.",
">\n\nJust blows my mind that some engineers are anti-vax / anti-science. I’m an engineer and that would be the antithesis of my being.",
">\n\nWe saw the same thing with a lot of nurses too. The people that should be the most on board with vaccines had a non-trivial number refuse the covid vaccine.",
">\n\nThere was a woman that went into my friends pharmacy and asked them for proof of flu vaccine, but didn’t want the actual vaccine. They didn’t do it for her, but she was a NICU nurse.",
">\n\nI have family members who are L&D nurses and they claimed a religious exemption to skirt the covid vaccine. They also refuse the flu shot every year and sign waivers saying they understand if they get the flu their leave will be unpaid. They then rant about big pharma and doctors being morons who are paid puppets. I finally said if big pharma is so fucking evil and doctors are scum bags then why the fuck did yall go into the nursing profession??? Aaaand crickets."
] |
>
Yep totally agree about the miracle of life part is why religious folks are drawn to it. However, the family members who claimed a religious exemption aren't religious AT ALL. They lied and their hospitals were short staffed and couldn't prove one way or the other so they got away with it. To this day they cannot give any valid reasons for not getting a covid vaccine. They can't even give a good reason for not getting the flu shot outside of "I don't want to and you can't make me". | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids.",
">\n\nBeing an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.\nIt's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it.",
">\n\nIt's always been anti-science people. Anti-vax, anti-GMO, climate deniers, they all share these traits.\nIn California we passed a law saying you can't be anti-vax based on religion anymore and go to school. You can be homeschooled or get vaxed unless there's a medical reason and it needs two doctors I think to say that there is a health danger to you.",
">\n\nJust blows my mind that some engineers are anti-vax / anti-science. I’m an engineer and that would be the antithesis of my being.",
">\n\nWe saw the same thing with a lot of nurses too. The people that should be the most on board with vaccines had a non-trivial number refuse the covid vaccine.",
">\n\nThere was a woman that went into my friends pharmacy and asked them for proof of flu vaccine, but didn’t want the actual vaccine. They didn’t do it for her, but she was a NICU nurse.",
">\n\nI have family members who are L&D nurses and they claimed a religious exemption to skirt the covid vaccine. They also refuse the flu shot every year and sign waivers saying they understand if they get the flu their leave will be unpaid. They then rant about big pharma and doctors being morons who are paid puppets. I finally said if big pharma is so fucking evil and doctors are scum bags then why the fuck did yall go into the nursing profession??? Aaaand crickets.",
">\n\nIMO labor and delivery nurses are more likely to think of nursing and bringing “the miracle of life into the world” as a calling because they’re religious. Because of that, I’m not shocked that they are probably conservative anti vaxxers. Maybe they aren’t conservative but big money says they are. \nIt’s prevalent among the entire field though. Before Covid I had a bunch of coworkers in a cardiac icu who said that they wouldn’t get the flu shot if it wasn’t mandatory. Very troubling."
] |
>
I'm so tired of the "we did our own research" crowd.
No, you didn't do your own research. You started with a belief and sought out information to confirm that belief.
Doing research involves starting with a hypothesis that you recognize may or may not be accurate, then collecting data in a neutral and objective way — that is, controlling for all reasonable variables so as to not influence the outcome of the results — in an effort to affirm or reject your hypothesis.
You didn't do that. You didn't do research. You Googled "evidence that vaccines cause autism" or "evidence that vaccines are dangerous" and believed vaccinesarethemarkofthebeast.net instead of peer-reviewed science.
It's a shame, too; children are dying because their parents — many of whom are alive because their parents chose to get vaccinated against measles, polio, and other deadly diseases — are putting them in harm's way.
It's the height of modern hubris to reject well-documented scientific literature and the opinions of the overwhelming majority of medical professionals because you think you and your essential oil mom friends know better. | [
"I really wanna see how many antivaxxers would refuse a rabies vaccine if they were bitten by a rabid animal.",
">\n\nThere was at least one.",
">\n\nHe died. I told my antivax mom about that and she just pretended I didn't say anything at all.",
">\n\nSheesh. One of the worst ways to die on top of that. The species progresses, one way or another",
">\n\nRabies is pretty much 100% fatal, and it is NOT a good way to go.",
">\n\nYeah without the vaccine somewhat immediately and then 3/4 more doses over the next month, it's 100% fatal. If you get bitten by a stray animal you should always go to a doctor. I would say any animal but it's situational. Your family dog is extremely likely to have rabies than a wild fox or so.\nHelplessness, hallucinations, inability to hydrate and then you start biting people because the virus is telling you to spread itself and making your brain think this is what you need to do.",
">\n\nI saw a video on here recently of a guy with rabies trying to drink water. The hydrophobia is so weird to me. Can you truly not drink it or are you actually just that scared of water?",
">\n\nThe muscles in your neck go into a very uncomfortable and painful spasm every time you try to swallow anything including your own saliva (which is why you see people/animals drooling). Swallowing becomes extremely difficult.",
">\n\nSuch a creepy thing to realize the way a virus works. Rabies is spread through saliva in wounds or on mucous membranes. So the disease makes you unable to swallow so you’re dripping with viral loaded saliva and aggressive (likely to bite/scratch).",
">\n\nWhich honestly makes it the biggest candidate for evolving and causing the zombie apocalypse. The disease turns it's host into a walking virus.",
">\n\nMy sister and I are both vaccinated but we both got measles from her unvaccinated classmate. I was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This was in the early 90s when being anti-vax wasn't trendy. I have no idea why that kid wasn't vaccinated.\nI tell this story a lot because I lived it. I'm extremely pro vaccine. It ultimately protected hundreds of kids in my school. I'm not mad that I was unlucky. I'm happy that the vaccine worked for so many... and me and my sister are still around, so big whoop.\nVaccinate your kids, stupid.\nEdit: Because people don't understand efficacy rates with vaccines: Two doses of the MMR is 97% effective at preventing measles. I was in that 3% and exposed to the virus.",
">\n\nMy mom withheld a lot of vaccines from me that I had to get later in life for college and international travel. \nAnti-vaxxers have been around for a while, just not necessarily as the major cultural movement it is today.",
">\n\nThere are 2 types of \"ant-vaxxer\"\nThere are those radically opposed based on \"their own research\" and then there are those that just are too lazy and can't be bothered to keep up with the vaccine schedule.\nIt's why public vaccination campaigns in schools are so important. We know like 20% of parents will never have their shit together but don't actively avoid vaccines.",
">\n\nMy mom fell in the middle. She was dubious but not militant until recently. She was convinced that vaccines gave my brother his diet sensitivities and cause his behavior issues because he got all of them and I didn’t and I ‘didn’t have those problems’.",
">\n\n\"Could it be DNA or parenting? No, it's the vaccines who are wrong\"",
">\n\nI’ve always been vocally pro-vaccine. My son was just recently diagnosed with autism. It is really annoying/frustrating the attitudes and looks I get from the anti-vaccine people in my life. Nobody has flat out said, “I told you so!” but the looks on their faces say it all.\nBoth my mother and I have a number of autistic traits, clearly it is genetic. Even more annoying is most of these are people from my mother’s side of the family, and most of them have had conflicts with my mother over the years because of her complete lack of social awareness.\nOne minor example is the time she gave my teenage cousin with a bad acne problem a bar of facial soap and explained to her that she needed to scrub her face with it twice a day and it would help, this interactions took place in front of the entire extended family. My cousin looked extremely embarrassed, but my clueless mom continued by warning her that if she didn’t use the soap she’ll end up with horrible scaring. Cringy moment, my aunt and uncle stayed angry over that one for a while.",
">\n\nI have a sister, we had all the same vaccinations, I am autistic, she is definitely not. \nFaced with this simple, real life example, a lot of people would rather believe vaccines rather than which genes you inherit cause autism.\nI can only conclude that this is because vaccines are something they can control, and genetics something they can't, and they'd rather kid themselves that they are in control than protect the life and health of their children and everyone else's.",
">\n\nOhio is always having some sort of drama. I sure hope they all have good health insurance.",
">\n\nI’m unfortunately from Ohio and there’s so many anti vaxxers around me that it makes me feel as if the states average IQ is just plummeting. I mean I know brilliant engineers who won’t get vaccinated all of a sudden and they’re passing it down to their kids.",
">\n\nBeing an antivaxxer used to be something for hippie woowoos who sing to crystals and think that pyramids cure cancer or some shit.\nIt's fucking weird that regressives latched on to it.",
">\n\nIt's always been anti-science people. Anti-vax, anti-GMO, climate deniers, they all share these traits.\nIn California we passed a law saying you can't be anti-vax based on religion anymore and go to school. You can be homeschooled or get vaxed unless there's a medical reason and it needs two doctors I think to say that there is a health danger to you.",
">\n\nJust blows my mind that some engineers are anti-vax / anti-science. I’m an engineer and that would be the antithesis of my being.",
">\n\nWe saw the same thing with a lot of nurses too. The people that should be the most on board with vaccines had a non-trivial number refuse the covid vaccine.",
">\n\nThere was a woman that went into my friends pharmacy and asked them for proof of flu vaccine, but didn’t want the actual vaccine. They didn’t do it for her, but she was a NICU nurse.",
">\n\nI have family members who are L&D nurses and they claimed a religious exemption to skirt the covid vaccine. They also refuse the flu shot every year and sign waivers saying they understand if they get the flu their leave will be unpaid. They then rant about big pharma and doctors being morons who are paid puppets. I finally said if big pharma is so fucking evil and doctors are scum bags then why the fuck did yall go into the nursing profession??? Aaaand crickets.",
">\n\nIMO labor and delivery nurses are more likely to think of nursing and bringing “the miracle of life into the world” as a calling because they’re religious. Because of that, I’m not shocked that they are probably conservative anti vaxxers. Maybe they aren’t conservative but big money says they are. \nIt’s prevalent among the entire field though. Before Covid I had a bunch of coworkers in a cardiac icu who said that they wouldn’t get the flu shot if it wasn’t mandatory. Very troubling.",
">\n\nYep totally agree about the miracle of life part is why religious folks are drawn to it. However, the family members who claimed a religious exemption aren't religious AT ALL. They lied and their hospitals were short staffed and couldn't prove one way or the other so they got away with it. To this day they cannot give any valid reasons for not getting a covid vaccine. They can't even give a good reason for not getting the flu shot outside of \"I don't want to and you can't make me\"."
] |
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